Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA)
On August 14, 2008, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) was signed into law. CPSIA defines a children’s product as “a consumer product designed or intended primarily for children 12 years of age or younger.” The act also mandated that all product or product components testing be performed at an independent accredited laboratory.
The legislation expanded the authority of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and regulates potentially hazardous children’s products by establishing safe levels for lead and phthalates (chemicals used to make plastics soft). Initially, paper, printing inks, adhesives, laminates, etc., thus books were not regulated by the CPSC. However, under the broad sweeping act, books and other printed matter intended for children 12 years old or younger now fall under certain CPSIA guidelines.
On August 8, 2011, HR bill 2715 was signed into law to amend the original law. This bill exempts ordinary books and other ordinary printed materials from the testing and certification requirements. An “ordinary book” or other ordinary printed matter is that which is printed on paper or cardboard with inks or toners and bound and finished using a conventional method.
CPSIA established three requirements relevant to Sourcebooks operations and its customers. Accordingly, all of the manufactured products we supply, comply with all applicable laws and regulations under the jurisdiction of the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission for the following sections:
(Sec. 101) Children’s Products must contain less than 100 ppm of lead, also as defined in CFR Title 16 – Chapter II – Subchapter B – Part 1303 Ban of Lead.
(Sec. 108) Children’s Products prohibit concentrations of more than 0.1 percent of di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), dibutyl phthalate (DBP), or butyl benzyl phthalate (BBP).
(Sec. 103) Inclusion of permanent traceability labels, where practicable, to include name and location of manufacturing facility, month/year of manufacture, and cohort information (such as batch, run number, or other identifying characteristic) of the product.
All of Sourcebooks’s approved vendors undergo continued scrutiny to maintain the highest levels of product standards. Relevant raw materials are tested prior to arriving at our print vendors’ production facilities. Testing is performed on a wide range of components to ensure that all potential product configurations will be covered via the certification results. All testing has been completed in conjunction with CPSC approved third-party laboratories, and the results indicate that each of the aforementioned products meet all lead and phthalates thresholds required.
General Conformity Certificates from our manufacturers are readily available for our products as further assurance of our compliance to CPSIA regulations.
